SPEAKING MATERIALS―SOURCES
FOR THE HISTORY OF ARCHAEOLOGY
27 – 28 July 2007
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte und Archäologie des Mittelalters
Venue: “Haus zur Lieben Hand”, Löwenstraße 16, D-79098 Freiburg
“Speaking Materials” – a conference to be held on the occasion of the European
research network Archives of European Archaeology (AREA) meeting at Freiburg
University – will be devoted to the concept and nature of the historical source.
Archaeologists doing research into the history of archaeology have to employ
historical methods and are indeed working as interdisciplinary historians, rather than
as archaeologists.
Excavating and collecting, as well as reading, writing and drawing have been
recognized as scientific practices. They contributed to the establishment of
collections (which may have survived in their original state), and also produced a
variety of written, printed and pictorial sources that make it possible to draw
conclusions concerning the history of archaeology. Such sources, whether they date
from the 20th or the 15th century, can be very elusive, and locating and investigating
them requires specific skills. Moreover, precise questions have to be formulated
before analyzing this kind of historical evidence.
The conference will additionally focus on the use of primary sources in the history of
archaeology, addressing problems which come up when working with them: What
textual or material evidence has survived (including excavated artefacts from
historical collections and photographs)? In which social and cultural contexts was it
created? What was the process of transmission and the history of its provenance?
Can access to the sources be made easier by providing full texts and digital images?
Contact:
info@ufg.uni-freiburg.de
+49 (0)761 203 3383
Figure overleaf: Iron Age ceramic vessel, excavated in 1733 in See near Görlitz, Lusatia. It became
labeled and came into the possession of the mayor of the city of Görlitz, Johann Wilhelm Gehler, in
1742 (Courtesy of Landesamt für Archäologie Sachsen, Dresden. Photo: J. Lipták).
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Friday 27 July 2007
14:00 Coffee
14:30 Opening
Sebastian Brather / Christoph Huth (Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte
und Archäologie des Mittelalters, Universität Freiburg D)
15:00 Sources for the history of archaeology
Dietrich Hakelberg (Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte und Archäologie
des Mittelalters, Universität Freiburg D)
The scope of the present conference ranges from early modern antiquaries
to modern archaeologists. It focuses on the textual, pictorial, material and
even oral evidence of the scientific activities that scholars, while
researching into the material relics of the past, have left behind in the
historical record. The introductory paper attempts to feature the concept
and special nature of the sources in the history of archaeology but also
tries to put them in their respective historical contexts. It will be argued
that any research in the history of archaeology cannot get close enough to
the primary sources. One aim is to demonstrate why any historical
evidence produced in the course of archaeological research is as much a
part of our cultural heritage as the archaeological objects themselves.
TEXTS AND IMAGES
Chair: Marc-Antoine Kaeser, Institut d’histoire, Université de Neuchâtel CH
15:30 Storing histories: formation and use of archaeological archives in
Sweden
Åsa Gillberg / Ola Jensen (Institutionen för arkeologi och antikens kultur,
University of Göteborg S)
The aim of our paper is to discuss archive material as sources for the
history of archaeology. Archive formation, selection, ordering and re-
ordering is discussed using Swedish archives in general and the
Antiquarian Topographical Archive, at the National Heritage Board in
Stockholm, in particular. We argue that a thorough knowledge of the
archive formation will make different interpretations of the material
possible. If the history of Swedish archaeology was to be based on archive
material alone, it would be a new and “revolutionary” narrative.
16:00 Coffee
16:30 Photograph collections as source of archaeological knowledge
Sudeshna Guha (South Asian History at the Faculty of Oriental Studies,
University of Cambridge UK)
Recognising photographs as material beings that are socially salient allows
us to explore a variety of ways in which archaeological knowledge is
created, consumed and nurtured. By shifting our focus beyond the image
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content, i.e. the indexical, to the substance that is a photograph, we find
ourselves attributing vastly different meanings to the inscriptive image,
and begin to understand why accumulative histories of photographic
objects are crucial for knowledge formation. We perceive shifts within
observational rhetoric and institutional paradigms, as well as the immanent
materiality of vision when we conceptually open ‘archaeological’
photographic collections. For, such collections alert us to the ways in which
the circulation and consumption of photographs as objects of reference
frequently blur and conflate the canonical categories they are meant to
establish and represent. This paper, which draws from my curation of
photographic collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Cambridge), will focus on the
ways in which both photographs and their archiving into discrete
collections have structured disciplinary epistemologies on the
archaeological, and of the negotiations involved in what has often been
valued as immutable unearthed evidence of the past.
17:00 Media and the function of images in the history of archaeology
Stefanie Klamm (Max Planck Institut for the History of Science, Berlin D)
In the mid-nineteenth century when classical archaeology began to
emerge as an academic institution, also the new photographic technology
became a practicable means for the representation of scientific objects.
However, other instruments of replication and reproduction were both
proven and available at the same time; drawings, prints and plaster casts
were used until the 20th century. Obviously, the choice of and preference
for certain illustrative techniques did not only depend on the status of the
technical development but had specific epistemological reasons.
The paper is part of a research project that analyses the direct and indirect
consequences of this ‘rivalry’ of media for the formation of knowledge in
the archaeological discipline. As a case study I will present material from
one of the biggest excavations in ninetheenth century Germany: From
1875 to 1881 German archaeologists dug at the ancient site of Olympia in
Greece.
The paper focuses on different forms of visual material, in combination
with texts, which remained from this excavation. In order to get a more
precise idea of the practice of excavating, the study will not only take the
published results into account but will also examine archival sources which
are mainly housed in the archive of the Museum of Antiquities in Berlin.
The material ranges from sketches in notebooks, diaries and official
reports to actual drawings, photographs and master copies preserved. The
process of transforming objects into images is of particular interest. In my
paper I thus intend to trace the relationship between drawing and
photography and changes of this relationship during the different stages of
the archaeological working-process, from the digging to the printed
publication.
17:30 Break
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18:15 Ruins between memory and oblivion
Alain Schnapp (Université de Paris I Panthéon – Sorbonne, Paris F)
We tend to regard the past as a broad landscape that embraces the region
in which our Western understanding of history has spread the most. Even
if a famous book by Momigliano has directed our attention to the “alien
wisdom”, we pay little attention to the antiquarians who are concerned
with non-European regions and we seldom seriously ask about the
differing practices of antiquarian views in various societies. To find an
answer to this question, we first have to ask what the antiquarian
viewpoint is. In his persuasive definition, Momigliano contrasts the
historian and the antiquarian. Both are involved in gathering information
and both try to understand the distant past, but their curiosity differs in
kind. For, he says, the historian investigates history in its problematic and
adheres thereby to chronology. The antiquarian, by contrast, is interested
in every kind of trace, provided it comes from old times: their form, their
typology, the technique of their production are fascinating problems that
arouse the curiosity of the antiquarian. Paul Petau, a 17th-century
precursor of the antiquarian thirst for knowledge, underscores proudly:
“nihil peto sine antiqua, I strive only for the ancient”. If I turn to the
material side of this striving for knowledge of the past, i.e., to the objects
and monuments, then I am quite aware that the concept of the
monument has a different meaning in each different culture and that with
my question I necessarily place the cultures that possess a form of
writing in the foreground. But it seems to me that my ideas, which follow,
fulfill the demands of a comparative viewpoint when I try to discover how
the various traditions in the Orient and Occident, each in its own way,
assign a special place to the dialog and rivalry between text and
monument. It remains to define what is meant by Western tradition: the
inhabitants of Egypt and Mesopotamia made a tremendous contribution to
the practice of preserving memory, toward which the Greeks, the Romans,
and the precursors of the Renaissance could orient themselves. If we posit
that the Western study of antiquity, which preceded archaeology in
today's sense of the term, is one endpoint on a long scale of researching
the past and that the tradition of the Chinese is the other end of the scale,
then this leaves much space to classify the means the ancient Egyptians
and Mesopotamians and many others used to discover the past.
Saturday 28 July 2007
PERSONS AND LIVES
Chair: Alexandra Alexandri, Greek Ministry of Culture, Athens GR
9:30 On some sources for Martin Opitz’ lost “Dacia Antiqua”
Harald Bollbuck (Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel D)
In 1622, the German poet Martin Opitz (1597-1639) went to Transsylvania
for having been appointed a teacher at the newly founded academy in
Alba Julia. Being a good humanist, he observed and discovered Roman
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antiquities while he was walking along the countryside. He collected some
60 inscriptions and made copies, which are now stored in the library of
Leiden University and the BNF in Paris. For Opitz, it was the starting point
of his later scholar's career. Back in Silesia, he told his friends of his new
profession: composing a comprehensive “Dacia Antiqua” which should deal
with the history from antiquity up to the present time. His correspondence
is full of questions about the conditions of writing down ancient history of
a country, which literal tradition is based only on small groundings.
Therefore, he implied, one needs to use more material traditions.
Unfortunately, there is no trace of his “Dacia Antiqua” left.
The lecture will reconstruct Opitz's work for this “Dacia Antiqua” as far as it
is possible, focusing on his inscriptions’s copies, on remarks about this
subject in the correspondence, and on evidence of his antiquarian activities
in other works. It will analyse the antiquarian’s practices and the functions
of dealing with antiquity in this time, just as well as the interpretations of
Opitz’s scholarly activities made by previous German studies of literature.
10:00 Creating the “archive” of a precursor: The case of Juan Vilanova y
Piera
Oscar Moro Abadía (Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. Johns CAN)
The word “archive” has been traditionally used to define both the physical
place in which historical documents are kept, catalogued and studied and
the set of documents and records relating to the activity of a person,
organization, association, community or nation. In both cases, the idea of
“archive” has been linked to the physical space where historians study and
examine archived objects. In this paper I discuss the concept of “archive”
with reference to the case of Spanish geologist Juan de Vilanova, one of
the first scientists to accept the authenticity of the Altamira paintings.
Given that there is no sole location devoted to the compilation of
Vilanova’s works, I seek to “create” his archive to explore his life and
works. In this paper I suggest ways in which an archive can be “created”
beyond the narrow idea of a physical space.
10:30 Coffee
11:00 Biography and the writing of the history of science: the
management of personal archives
Marc-Antoine Kaeser (Institut d’histoire, Université de Neuchâtel CH)
Considering the present trend of biographical studies, and their academic
recognition within the discipline of history, it may be useful to reflect about
their specific role in the writing of the history of science — and especially,
for the history of archaeology.
In this respect, we ought to consider the pecularities of private archives, in
their thematic contents as well as in their material shape. Obviously, such
archival materials do not allow any type of inquiry. In our views (and
although this might seem paradoxical at a first glance), they are
particularily suited for stressing the relationships of all kinds (social,
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political, intellectual, epistemological, etc.) within the construction of
archaeological knowledge.
From this point of view, beyond common historical source-criticism, our
contribution will discuss some methodological precautions which appear to
be necessary — while stressing that the constitutive diversity of private
archives forms an indisputable asset in this process.
11:30 Oral history and the history of archaeology
Martijn Eickhoff (Faculteit der Letteren, Afdeling Geschiedenis, Radboud
Universiteit, Nijmegen NL)
In present society, many aspects of personal memory are considered to be
‘heritage’ and, as such, they are collected in oral history projects. However,
within the history of archaeology these projects are still exceptional. There
have been some initiatives - often motivated with the ‘now or never’-
phrase - but a central body of theoretical or research questions has not
been developed yet.
In the Netherlands the first oral history project related to archaeological
practice was started in the early 1970s, in preparation of the 25th
anniversary of the Rijksdienst voor het Oudheidkundig Bodemonderzoek
(ROB). The prehistorian Herbert Sarfatij interviewed archaeologists and
civil servants who had been involved in the establishment of this
archaeological state department. In this paper the Sarfatij-tapes will be
analysed and compared with the interviews done by the speaker in the mid
1990s as part of his dissertation on Dutch archaeology and national
socialism. By discussing issues such as collective memory, competing
stories, and the diverting interests attached to historiography the
importance of oral history for the history of archaeology is reconsidered.
12:00 Oral-historical evidence in historical reconstruction of
archaeological lives
Pamela J. Smith (Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge UK)
According to the pre-eminent historian, Quentin Skinner, historical analysis
should recover intention, reconstruct convention and restore context. Used
properly, oral-historical evidence greatly enhances our ability to do this.
With oral material, we can re-create past motivations and social attitudes.
Oral recordings capture the tone, volume, silence, emotion and personal
meaning of old events. Material collected through interviews adds colour
and depth to the stories we tell. No more elegant tool exists.
Methodologies for using oral evidence will be briefly discussed. Two cases
studies will then be described. I first detail my work on the development of
the British academic archaeology during the 1920s and 1930s. At that
time, the typewriter was hardly regarded as the proper mode of
communication between gentlemen. I listened to numberless people
discussing their archaeological lives before noticing how important tea
was. My research on tea-rooms and the history of archaeological thought
will be briefly presented.
The oral-historical panels which I have established at the University of
Cambridge will then be used as a second case study. A DVD of last year's
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panel of discussants will be available and will be analysed. Those panelists
remembered the 1960s and the beginnings of processualism in
archaeology. Conclusions as to the importance of oral and visual sources
will then be offered.
12:30 Lunch
THINGS AND COLLECTIONS
Chair: Nathan Schlanger, Institut national de recherches archéologiques preventives
INRAP, Paris F
14:00 Coffee
14:30 Sources for the history of archaeological collecting during the
19th century in Germany
Frauke Kreienbrink (Historisches Seminar, Professur für Ur- und
Frühgeschichte, Universität Leipzig D)
Collections of excavated objects were already an essential element of
antiquarian and archaeological practice before archaeology became
institutionalised as a science. However, except for some rare examples, the
collections themselves did not survive untouched until today. Even if
several artefacts of a collection are still existent, they have normally been
taken out of their original context and instead became integrated into a
new museum concept. Antiquarians and archaeologists brought not only
together the collections themselves, but also produced a variety of written
documents and images about these collections and the objects that they
contained. These sources are indispensable for reconstructing the original
composition, concept and development of a collection and can shed light
on various problems in the history of collecting. The chances for the
collections themselves being preserved and the preservation of the
associated documentary record can be very different. On the basis of some
examples from 19th-century Southwest Germany this paper presents some
of the problems and processes in the transmission of archaeological private
collections and their documentation on the one hand and of
institutionalised and state collections on the other.
15:00 Three-dimensional archives, the Augier models of the Musée
Borély (Marseille, France)
Béatrice Vigié / Noël Coye (Institut National du Patrimoine, Galerie Colbert,
Paris F)
During the last third of the 19th Century, a man called Hippolyte Augier
made a series of 79 scale models of archaeological sites and monuments.
Augier worked in the Musée Borély in Marseilles, that was funded in 1863
(i.e. one year after the French Museum of National Antiquities in Saint-
Germain-en-Laye) as the Museum of Mediterranean Archaeology. This
collection shows us sites and monuments from prehistoric times to the 16th
Century and from the South of France and the whole Mediterranean area
(Italy, Greece, Egypt, Lybia …). The Borély Museum preserves several of
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these models, but also photographs, archaeological artefacts, and a few
hand-written and typed archives related to them.
Our paper will deal with the cultural context of the creation of these
models (in relation with the concept of Mediterranean archaeology), the
process of their transmission and the part they can take in the study of
history of archaeology.
15:30 Final discussion and concluding remarks
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